If you're interested in building your own website, or developing a web app or service for others to use, you'll need to get familiar with how the web works and the tools you'll need to develop for it. Mozilla's Webmaker project can help you learn, with fun, interactive activities and lesson plans designed for people of all skill levels.

Webmaker is actually a global project by the folks at Mozilla designed to teach people web literacy—that is, pull back the veil on how the web works and your favorite sites and apps function, and so you can learn to build for the web yourself. The general idea, according to Mozilla, is that there's no better way to learn the mechanics and culture of the web than by playing around and hacking it in a safe, fun environment.

Advertisement

Webmaker has three major components—the Thimble interactive, collaborative code editor that demystifies HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and corrects you as you write it (and shows you the results of what you write as you write it), X-Ray Goggles, which lets you view the source of any element on a web page—then change and tweak it to see what effect it would have on a real website, and Popcorn, an HTML5 media tool that shows you how to layer videos, images, audio embeds, and other rich media on web sites.

The Thimble editor just picked up an educational award, and the whole project is designed to break from a simple cirriculum of lessons (a la Codecademy and the like) and instead focus on getting hands-on with web design and development. If you're interested, or thinking about building your own website or webapps, it's worth a look. Hit the link below for more information.